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Tag Archives: Historical Fiction

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  2. Entries tagged with "Historical Fiction"

A Fatal Love Cover against a red background

#BookReview of A Fatal Love by Louisa Treger

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne10th August 20262 Comments

[ About A Fatal Love ] It is Easter Sunday in 1955 and a young man lies face-down on the ground covered in blood. A woman, blonde and petite, stands over him with a gun in her hand. This is the story of Ruth Ellis as never told before… As Ruth awaits her trial in…

Cover of The City in Year Zero by Michael Russell and the words - The tenth and final installment in Michael Russell’s Stefan Gillespie series - against a faded image of the book cover

#BookReview of The City in Year Zero by Michael Russell

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne30th July 2026Leave a comment

[ About The City in Year Zero ] Nothing thrived here, but something grew… Germany, 1945. Year Zero. The war is at an end. When Ireland’s ambassador to the Third Reich finally leaves the war-torn country, Garda detective Stefan Gillespie makes his way home under the watchful eye of British Intelligence, who are searching for some…

Feature image of The cover of The Glass Key by Amanda Geard with the quote 'Forty-six years after her disappearance, the name Anna Swan still lingered in Hellebore House, just a whisper on everyone’s lips'

#BookReview of The Glass Key by Amanda Geard

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne24th July 20262 Comments

[ About The Glass Key ] In Ireland, Maggie has grown up hearing her mother tell her the bedtime story of The Glass Key. It’s a Nordic fairytale passed down by Maggie’s grandmother Anna Swan, who mysteriously left her home one stormy night years ago, never to return. Now Maggie’s grandfather has died and going through…

#BookReview of The Healers’ War by Olive Collins

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne3rd July 2026Leave a comment

Inspired by real events during the Biafran War (1967–1970), The Healers’ War follows three lives bound together by famine, faith, and survival in a besieged corner of Eastern Nigeria. [ About The Healer’s War ] As war encroaches upon their region, Irish missionaries refuse to flee, instead building feeding centers, clinics, and a secret airstrip…

#BookReview of Mithim by Carina McNally

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne30th June 20262 Comments

[ About Mithim ] Wexford, 1657. Ireland is on its knees. Eight years after Cromwell’s army burned Killenea Castle to the ground, Mithim McMurrough – daughter of a Gaelic lord, healer and last keeper of her family’s secrets – is living alone and in hiding in the depths of a Wexford forest. The soldiers are…

Land by Maggie O'Farrell with a quote from the publisher on a featured image

#BookReview of #Land by Maggie O’Farrell

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne5th June 20262 Comments

[ About Land ] On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not…

The Hope Keeper by Heather Webb featuring with the tagline from the description

#BookReview of The Hope Keeper by Heather Webb

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne26th May 2026Leave a comment

[ About The Hope Keeper ] 1919, Washington D.C. Elisabeth Beaumont comes from a renowned jeweler family, but after the untimely death of her twin brother, she’s left on her own to run the failing family business. Desperate for work, she approaches the affluent crowd her brother Julien once courted to expand Beaumont Jewelers. Their ringleader…

#BookReview of #InMemoriam by Alice Winn

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne3rd March 20263 Comments

The must-read, Sunday Times bestselling First World War love story [ About In Memoriam ] It’s 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in an idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they’re too young to enlist, and anyway,…

#BookReview of #Crucible by John Sayles | @melvillehouse.bsky.social

Blog Tour, Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne27th January 2026Leave a comment

‘A complex and sweeping historical novel about Henry Ford — the Elon Musk of his day, in more ways than one — and his attempt to rule not only an automotive empire but the rambunctious city of Detroit.‘– Crucible [ About Crucible ] Already the gateway for illegal Canadian liquor during Prohibition, the Motor City…

#BookReview of Fireflies in Winter by Eleanor Shearer

Book ReviewBy Mairéad Hearne19th January 20264 Comments

‘A mesmeric novel of two young women who fight for love, survival and a spark of hope on the edge of the wilderness.‘ [ About Fireflies in Winter ] Nova Scotia 1796. Cora, an orphan newly arrived from Jamaica, has never felt cold like this. In the depths of winter, everyone in her community huddles together…

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